The Gitmo Torture Obama Is Ignoring

I wish Judge Gladys Kessler hadn't take quite such a dive on the case of the Guantanamo hunger-strikers who are being force-fed. In brief, she said that she can't stop this abhorrent practice, but that the president can, and should, and forthwith.

In reference to Obama, Kessler said in her four-page order that "there is an individual who does have the authority to address the issue." She noted that Obama had voiced concerns during a speech in May about the merits of force-feeding detainees, asking: "Is that who we are?" "It would seem to follow," Kessler wrote, that Obama had the authority "to directly address the issue of force-feeding the detainees." She also said that Dhiab had "set out in great detail in his papers what appears to be a consensus" that force-feeding violates international law.

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Naturally, however, since this administration seems capable of lapsing into incredible cowardice every time the word "terrorist" is whispered anywhere in our politics, the Justice Department sought -- and won -- the right to keep torturing prisoners this way by hiding in the thickets of bullshit verbiage that sprouted up after the 9/11 attacks.

The Obama administration had argued the court did not have jurisdiction. Under federal law, civilian courts do not have jurisdiction to hear cases concerning the detention, treatment or conditions of confinement of any enemy combatant, Kessler wrote, citing a 2009 court decision. Government lawyers said the government had well-established legal authority to force-feed hunger-striking detainees.

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Somewhere, I think John Yoo got a chubby and doesn't know why.

The hunger strike is an ancient, and honorable, and powerful method of non-violent resistance to authority. After all, it puts the people in authority in the position of either giving in, or allowing people in their custody to die of starvation. >Naturally, the middle way is for the people in authority to force the hunger strikers to eat. In Great Britain, in 1909, suffragettes embarked on a hunger strike and, within four months, a regime of forcible feeding was imposed upon them, with dreadful results.

The forcible feeding of women was a brutal and life-threatening procedure conducted against the wishes of the "patient". The hunger striker was held down on a bed by wardresses or tied to a chair which they tipped back. Then a rubber tube was either forced up the nose or down the throat and into the stomach. The latter method was particularly painful because a steel gap was pushed into the mouth and screwed open, as wide as possible. Tissue in the nose and throat was nearly always damaged, while sometimes the tube was accidentally inserted into the windpipe, causing food to enter the lungs and endangering life. This invasion of the body, accompanied by overpowering physical force, suffering and humiliation made many women feel they had been raped, with the words "violation" or "outrage" being commonly used.

We then move along 70 years, and IRA prisoners launch a hunger strike in protest of their treatment in the British prisons. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher -- whose death this year was treated with the studied disinterest warranted by her entire public career, and the studied disinterest with which this country should have treated the passing of Lady Thatcher partner in disaster, Ronald Reagan -- decided to let Bobby Sands, an elected member of Parliament, and nine other prisoners starve themselves to death. But not before the British prison officials force-fed some of the men. One of them. Michael Gaughan, may have died from it.

British policy at this time was to force feed hungerstrikers in a particularly brutal manner: Six to eight guards would restrain the prisoner and drag him or her by the hair to the top of the bed, where they would stretch the prisoner's neck over the metal rail, force a block between his or her teeth and then pass a feeding tube, which extended down the throat, through a hole in the block.

(The definitive book on this period, including an admirably clear-eyed assessment of the political intransigence on both sides, is Biting At The Grave, by Padraig O'Malley. It damn well should be on the bedside stand in the Lincoln Bedroom by tonight.)

The British managed to resort to sadism on the way to official murder. Scoreboard! And we have borrowed too much from them -- secret trials, unlimited detention, and now force-feeding hunger strikers -- in our global "war" on terror for my comfort, thanks.

With all due respect, screw the NSA surveillance scheme. You want to see what we've become in our fear and barely suppressed rage, look to Gitmo. We are currently inflicting this barbarism on 45 people who have not been charged with anything and who are protesting the fact that they are being locked away without having been charged with anything. There is one person who can stop this. And please, don't anyone say anything about the problems with the Republican Congress, or what the gobshites will say on Sunday, or anything else. When they can, presidents act. This one must.